Week 3

My maths and ed tech merry-go-round!

#AdultConversations #52weeks52speaks

Week 3 Sammy White

Teaching adults is wonderful. They bring all their rich life experiences with their compassion and care supporting each other through their studies. I teach GCSE maths so very often adults are in my classroom for a specific need, often career progression related. I have a passion for education technology and I coach and mentor staff on their use of technology in the classroom. This means I like to try things first hand before I share my top tips, so I can learn the nuances of the tool. Perhaps it works better this way rather than that way and so on. The problem is almost of my adults lack confidence with technology, they fear it even!

Week one of every new year and we have to download and enrol onto Google Classroom. We have to sign up to Hegarty Maths and download the Google Hangouts app. Every year the same 3 things. Every year I think I have cracked the magic formula and plan carefully how to tackle the 3 daunting tasks. I have many sleepless nights role playing every which way this lesson can go wrong, mainly based on past experiences, as every year it does go wrong!

It goes wrong because adults who are returning to learning have their previous education as their reference point. But their reference points may be 3 or even 30 years ago. Education has moved on. They know this though and are already nervous about what this new education will look and feel like. Will they manage to keep up? Will they manage juggling work and homework? Will they look silly to others? Completely normal anxieties. We then introduce them to their new experience of education with a complicated enrolment process which requires paperwork (who even has paperwork anymore?) followed by assessments to check they are on the right course. Finally they reach the peak of the mountain and they arrive in our classroom. They have had sleepless nights in preparation for today and then they are asked to download some apps, it is too much for them, they were expecting to start learning. So every year we have the same struggles downloading 2 apps and signing up to 1 website.

This year my class started in the mid lockdown limbo. We were allowed in the building in groups of 6 (I have a class of 25) logistically we had staggered starts planned. I wanted it to be as welcoming as possible. I was grateful for the shortened sessions to allow for the staggered starts as this meant I could forgo the 2 app download and website sign up and get them to do it at home. We spent the short time together chatting in a group of 6 learning why we were here. I assured them they were in safe hands and that we would all be fine together. I wrote detailed step by step instructions with pictures of where to click and added these to a bit.ly/CampusName. I had cracked it, so I thought. Yet before the last session had finished the learners from the first session were emailing saying they couldn’t access the bit.ly. I was very confused. It was bit.ly/CampusName. I rang one of the learners and she was really struggling to find the instructions. We discovered she was using bit.ly/campusname. Capitals are important! Once again my epic careful planning for downloading 2 apps had failed!

Following this first session we decided to study online. Off we went for the first session. In those first 30 minutes we had upside down cameras. People muted with camera on when they wanted mic on and camera off. We heard all of Tina’s kids swear words as she tried to calm him down after losing an xbox game, again she thought she was muted. I muted Tina but then she didn’t know how to unmute. I asked everyone their favourite film as an ice breaker and Charles struggled to find the chat box. Patrick left the lesson and rejoined doing the hokey kokey for the first 30mins as every time he wanted to unmute he accidentally left the meeting.

My adults are not alone. Colleagues have experienced the same. My learners are capable and now we have lessons online with no problem at all (apart from Tina’s son if she isn’t quick enough to mute). I didn’t teach them these skills, they had these digital skills. They lacked confidence in using these skills. There are 2 issues at play affecting their confidence. One is that they are expecting a daunting education experience. Yet this goes out of the window when they meet their supportive relatable tutor (not just referring to me, FE is a welcoming place for all). So they transfer this anxiety to the technology that they are being asked to embrace. The second is that in most cases their digital skills are self taught through necessity. Usually from employers moving tasks online or through parenting children in an ever increasingly online world. These skills will most often be solid and competently known and shown. Yet they feel that they are inferior. They may not be as tech savvy as their children, and this may be ridiculed at home. They feel that their digital skills are inferior because they haven’t learnt them in a structured taught environment. Because they haven’t been shown and they have muddled through, my adults often believe that they are less capable digitally than others. This is not the case. My adults’ digital skills are often more than enough for what we need but they often fear using their digital skills.

This fear is categorised into 2 groups. One group who are scared to break the internet so don’t even bother swiping the screen in case a global outage occurs. The other group expects the internet to be fast so they swipe multiple times in frustration never waiting for a page or app to load causing them to end up at the wrong destination. These fears I empathise with. In unfamiliar territory we can all choose to tread carefully. When we expect certain outcomes we can easily become frustrated and take zealous action. This empathy is why I love FE. We can relate to our learners and help them navigate the fog blocking them from swiping. This empathy makes FE the most welcoming education environment I know.

Sammy White is a maths teacher and ed tech trainer.

Sammy writes a blog. Check out this article about synchronous and asynchronous learning in lockdown with her adult students.

Want to contribute a piece to #52weeks52speaks? Great! Email your article or creative endeavours to adultconversations2021@gmail.com. We are open to all types of contributions which focus on adult community education. This might be blog articles, academic articles, essays, poems, art works, podcasts, news pieces, stories, films – from either adult educators or students. They might be reflective pieces, sharing of experiences, research pieces, a polemic or a think piece. That’s really up to you. We just ask that you please adhere to our community guidelines on ethos and values.

Want to attend one of the regional conversations? Let us know and look out for the Eventbrite booking opening for your region.

We welcome any offers of support so just get in touch. Our aims or ‘purpose’ can be found in the About section of the website.